it was good but…….. it was totally worth it.

(Continued from the last entry. If you haven’t read it yet, you might as well go back.)

we totally went to downtown Denver to this record store called Twist and Shout and got them to carry our album, and this one guy who was just standing there bought one on the spot and talked to us for a good 30 minutes about how he was from Dallas and how he knew some people over at the radio station and we should drop off a CD with them, and that he was working at the College newspaper now and he could get us a review in it, so we went down to the Clear Channel radio station and dropped off 2 copies in the hopes that we’ll get radio play in Denver. If you know anyone in Denver, tell them to get our record at Twist and Shout so they’ll get more.

Then we found tickets for The Police concert in Denver but we could only get 2 so it was gonna be me and Joe going, but Joe ended up getting sick from some funky salsa he ate the night before, and so he stayed and Joey and I went. We got pretty good seats that were worth about $95 for $60 on craigslist and the Police just blew me away. They were great and they did all kinds of alternate arrangements on their songs. Stewart Copeland even had this auxiliary percussion set that would rise out of the ground behind him with his bigass 5 foot gong in the middle of it. Andy and Stewart were simply amazing. They’ve gotten so much better, and they were so tight as a group. It made Joey and me optimistic that even a 3 piece can put out a killer sound and that if we work our asses off, eventually we can be like The Police. We’re gonna try to catch them in Dallas or Houston so Joe can go.

We finally got the wifi to work and found one person to couchsurf with in Utah. Our original plan was to stay with Spencer, one of Joey’s friends from highschool. Due to some misunderstanding he was like "Oh…. you guys wanted to STAY here?" and yeah… we had to find a hotel for one night, but I convinced the guys to go to Extended Stay because I like those cats. we got to do our laundry finally and watched Conan O’brian.

We couldn’t play x-box though because the TV was ancient crap and only had a coaxial hookup. And even that was literally about to fall out of the back of the TV set. But we got by. It was a really nice hotel all things considered. The next day we didn’t have anything to do because Sencer was busy filming some movie and we hadn’t gotten a call from our couchsurfing host yet, so we had breakfast at the Cracker Barrel because Joey likes it. They had pretty good pot pie actually. Nice southern comfort food.

We drove around SLC for a while and stopped at the library and got comic books, then we stopped at the park and while Joey and Joe slept I watched Zeiram. Then Joe wandered off and got a haircut at this place called Bikini Cuts where the lady was wearing a bikini and styled his hair all cool. I got a call around that time from Ed, the couchsurfing guy in SLC and we got a confirmed bed for the next night.  Somewhere in there we stayed at a Howard Johnson Inn but that place was so crappy I can’t remember where it was or what night we stayed there. I’ve blocked it from my mind. No Wifi anyway. Oh! the La Quinta was in Aurora (we kept making fun of that name) and the HoJo was in Denver proper. Wait… what did we do Monday then? The police played Sunday night… OH that was when we watched Knocked up and went to the Twist and Shout and the Radio Station. Got it.  Drove through the mountains Tuesday, stayed at the Extended Stay on Tuesday Night in SLC. Wednesday was when we hung around and Joe got his haircut.  Now then…  back to Wednesday.

So THEN we eventually found the club in Sandy, despite the fact that none of the streets are clearly marked (and it’s even worse at night) and met up with some Photographers that my friend Caz pointed us to. They took a million awesome photos of us and even shot some live pics of our performance, and we got a GREAT deal on the photos too. normally they charge $200 but since we’re friends of Caz and we were kinda strapped for cash after the ticket in Oklahoma they only asked $100 from us. shhhh don’t tell anyone.

They were such nice people. And so yeah we played first that night at this little cafe/coffee shop in Sandy, Utah called Solid Ground Cafe. We were seriously like the oldest people there. well… I take that back. we were the only people in our 20s. everyone else was a teenager or thier mom, but it was funny everyone who played after us was "How about that first band! They rocked." Of course none of them had any money so we didn’t sell any CDs but we made $30 on the cover charge through the door. We made friends with the bands that played too and stuff.

Ed couldn’t make it out to our show because he was at a Tango lesson with 3 of his roommates. Spencer couldn’t make it because of the movie. Still we had fun and Joe was feeling a little better. Then we headed back to SLC to find some food and we were debating what we should eat and then we saw this 24 hour mexican food restaurant called Betos. That was totally it. I had this giant chimichanga (fried beef burrito) with sour cream and guacamole and beans and rice and pico, and a giant mango juice. mmmmmmmmmmmm!

I loved it. Oddly enough the one true Mexican among us was totally decimated within about 15 minutes and we had to stop off at a Smith’s (kinda like an Albertsons) and wait quite a while while he recovered. Meanwhile Joe seemed to be empowered by the mexican food (and the 2 cups of mountain dew) and he was off like a rocket for the rest of the night. It was hilarious. There was this parking lot attendant that looked like Mr. Strickland and every time Joe saw him he’d go "Slacker!!" and then continue his rant about how girls suck the happiness out of guys and then he’d see the guy again and say "Slacker!" It was a riot.

After about 20 minutes Joey comes back out and he looks much lighter on his feet and pretty happy. We half expected to see a tidal wave of shit pour out of the store but I think it was all contained in the bathroom. Anyway we headed out and proceeded to get lost again in SLC because none of the streets have signs or when they do, you can’t read them at night. We just ended up calling Ed and having him tell us how to get there by landmarks. We arrived there before him and we met Marco, Tim Heather and some other guy whose name I forget. They introduced us around, offered us some weed and chatted as we brough our stuff in.

Finally Ed comes through the door with Courtney, her boyfriend, and one other guy, neither of whom I remember. And maybe one more girl? but in any case, they all live there in the same house. Student housing and such. but yeah we hung out and talked, and found out that they had an old drumset in the basement that needed to be tuned and fixed up, but Joe offered to tune it for them because he’s a drummer and he always carries a drum key with him. Tim had a mandolin with him that he’d been playing a grand total of 2 days, but he got the open chords down and jammed with us when Joe tuned the drumset. Also they had a micro brewery in the basement where they were making beers ales and honey wine.

Some time during the night Juan and Melissacame back home. They live there too. So we jammed with Ed and Tim until like 3AM and slept on thier comfy couches and giant bean bag chair, and in the morning we met Hayley who had been asleep the entire time we were there that night. She said she was annoyed at first that we were making so much noise but then it started to sound really good so she was ok. She made me some irish coffee and we hit the road. He has a million friggin roommates.

We met up with Spencer that next morning in Provo which is south of Sandy which is south of SLC. We had dinner at the one hidden IHOP in the entire city. We really don’t think they like IHOPs there for some reason. We had so much fun with Spencer. He’s a comedian after all. But I don’t know if it was because he was funny or it was because we were really on that day but every minute of that breakfast was hilarious. Me and Joe had to drop our Betos bombs that morning. Spencer was like "Oh you guys went to Betos huh? Yeah they have good food there but you better set aside some time later for them too… but it’s totally worth it." and that was like the motto of our entire trip. "We had some good times and shit happened… oh but it was totally worth it."

We joked around about this van full of explosives that apparently rammed into a mountainside about a year ago and exploded a big black hole in the mountainside and how it reminded us of the episode of the Simpsons where Snake tosses a beer can out his window and Bette Midler chases after him and makes his car fly off a cliff and he shouts "I’ll get you for this Midlerrrrr!" as his car explodes, among other things, and then we said our farewells and headed for Durango.  Which we now affectionately dub Draino.  That part comes next.

We headed out old highway 666 to get there which has since been renamed probably because of ghost stories. And the place was about 24 miles north of Durango but we had a hell of a time finding it because Joey wrote down the wrong adress. Once we got there it was pretty obvious. We got there around 8:30 and there was this brand new liquor store that had opened up across the street but that had closed at 8 so we couldn’t go there to get beer or anything. The general store abotu 5 miles down the road had also closed at 7. The only place still open was this place called The Olde School House.

The Olde School House is this bar/pizzaria up there in the middle of nowhere and it was really packed so we decided to pick up a menu and call our order in since it was gonna take them at least an hour to make it. That’s how busy they were. So we picked up a menu, Larry drove us back, offered us beer and weed, and we started watching Sin City since Joe was the only one of us who had seen it already. We watched about 3 stories into the movie and then we paused it and went back to the School House to pick up the ‘zas.

I had a stout from a local brewery called the Ska Brewery which was surprisingly smooth and tasty and Joey and Larry had the pinstripe amber ale. We were watching the last of the basketball game since it was gonna be another 15 minutes before the pizza was ready and this guy comes up to us, and Joey says he was the Mayor but it technically wasn’t a town out there and I think he was some sort of elected official in charge of the entire County, but we’ll call him the Mayor for clarity. And he was a good buddy of Luke’s and he sat down and started to shoot the shit with us and he was telling us about this new seal he designed for Durango (he said it "Draino County") that had a hand giving devil horns in the middle of it. And then he looks at me and he points behind the bar and says "Hey whatcha think of my daughter? That’s her behind the bar. She’s pretty hot, eh? She ain’t wearin them pigtails tonight but that makes her look cute."

(Continued in the Next entry because this was a long fuckin trip)———————>